The BERC Group is an independent evaluation, research, and consulting firm focused on putting research into practice. Our mission is to skillfully gather, analyze, and use data to inform, inspire, and improve all learning organizations.

Change is hard. Whether you are 8 or 80, times of transition can be overwhelming, unnerving, and downright scary. For children and teens, transitions from elementary to middle and middle to high school can coincide with other major changes in their development, contributing to a perfect storm of raging hormones, shaky self-esteem, new social pressures, and increasing academic expectations. With all of the focus on College and Career Readiness it can be easy to lose site of the here and now. We pressure teachers to teach to the correct standards and students to perform to them, but sometimes we neglect the social and emotional side of education.

In a three-year study, our research team evaluated a grant given by the Raikes Foundation to various school districts across Washington State to help students transition from elementary to middle school. The study gathered student and parent perceptions about middle school and analyzed the services and strategies schools used to help ease the transition.

It turns out, many students form their perceptions of the next school level based on hearsay and stories from their teachers, parents, and peers. It also turns out that many adults still harbor ill feelings about their own middle school experiences. In focus groups, parents shared their own stories of bullies and drama when they were students. Older students and siblings warn incoming students of fights, drugs, mean teachers, and bad food. Students reported hearing their teachers say, “Just wait—you’ll never get away with that kind of behavior in middle school” or “You are going to be in for a surprise when you see how much homework you’ll have.” While many or all of these tales may contain elements of truth, they certainly do not paint the whole picture, or at least not a very optimistic one.

So what are the major concerns of transitioning students? Based on a series of focus groups of transitioning sixth graders, we found students’ biggest worries to be bullying/fights, getting lost, not being able to open their lockers, getting shoved inside a locker, and fitting in socially. You will notice, none of these issues have anything to do with academics. As educators and parents, we can help ease that transition in order to help students focus on important things (like completing their homework and passing tests). Here are some suggestions on how parents, teachers, counselors, administrators, and peers can all help ease the transition with minimal effort.

Accountability systems that focus primarily on reading and math scores, rising expectations with the Common Core State Standards, and increased pressure on low-performing schools has led many schools to spend more and more time on “core” classes like reading, writing, and mathematics. Often schools expand these classes at the cost of non-tested subjects such as science, social studies, physical education, and the arts. While teachers and administrators lament the loss of these subjects, often teachers report there is not enough time in the regular school day to address them. This loss affects low socio-economic status students harder than their more affluent counterparts, who often have access to after-school sports and arts programs. This is especially troublesome because a large body of research has shown that access to physical education and fine arts programs actually increases students’ academic performance.

To combat the loss of these programs, many schools are turning to an Expanded Learning Time (ELT) model. Alternatively called Extended Learning Time, the ELT model extends the day to allow time for increased reading and math studies in the regular part of the day while allowing for other subjects to be available in the extended part of the day. As more schools implement the ELT model, researchers are able to gather more data to aid in determining the most effective models. We have evaluated two ELT programs in Hawai’i and drawn conclusions similar to studies across the country:

We believe our College Tracking data is a critically important outcome indicator of how well Washington State schools are preparing students to attend, persist, and graduate from college. Several newspaper articles in the last few weeks compare graduation data from our College Tracking website with national data. When interpreting college graduation data from College Tracking, it is important to recognize some of the major differences between the data presented on College Tracking and what national organizations, such as the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), report.

Over the next few school years, Washington teachers, administrators, and students face a set of revolutionary changes that will fundamentally alter the educational landscape. The adoption of Common Core State Standards will entail alterations to curriculum, instruction, and assessment. The introduction of a new teacher evaluation program foreshadows significant changes to the tenure and promotion system for teachers. And, beginning with the class of 2015, students will have to pass the state’s mathematics and biology end-of-course examinations to qualify for high school graduation. Administrators, teachers, parents, and students who are grappling with all of these changes might wonder why so many aspects of the educational system are changing seemingly at once.

At my junior high and high school we didn’t have programs that were supposed to help get you ready for college. I figured graduating with a B average would get me into college, but I hadn’t given a single thought to the systems behind how the classes I was taking would affect my college eligibility. I assumed that whoever made the decisions about what classes to offer at our school wouldn’t have put classes on the schedule that would have somehow hindered our future success.

I was lucky enough that whoever made these decisions decided to offer what we would now call gateway classes and college-eligible classes. I was lucky enough that my parents were there telling me I was going to go to college. And I was lucky enough that I hadn’t chosen a vocational profession. But what if I hadn’t been so fortunate? What if I was responsible for picking the classes I needed to take to contribute to my college eligibility? What if I had wanted to join the military? Or become a welder? What if my school hadn’t ensured that all the classes available to me were ones that would help me get to college? Well, I wouldn’t have had any idea which direction to face as I stepped off that stage, diploma in hand. Many students face this problem today; they are grossly under-prepared for life after high school.

At The BERC Group I have been able to get an in-depth look at programs that are working to fill in these knowledge gaps of life beyond high school. One of these programs is Navigation 101, or what we simply call “Nav.”

This video clip provides a bit of comic relief to illustrate the confusion and frustration with teaching math as well as how you might feel about the changing of standards over the last few years. As a former middle and high school math and science teacher, principal, and a current research associate with The BERC Group, I understand the stresses and concerns which many districts around the nation are facing in adopting the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) for Mathematics and understanding and implementing the eight mathematical practices. District leaders, school administrators, and math teachers are asking themselves: “How will the CCSS integrate with state and district frameworks, how will our current instructional materials and instructional practices assimilate with current instructional materials that we have, and if adopting new curricular materials how can we assure ourselves the new materials will align with CCSS in Mathematics and the eight Mathematical Practices?”

We assisted the Hawai'i Department of Education (HIDOE) with reviewing math curricular materials for a K-12 statewide adoption using resources from The Charles A. Dana Center at the University of Texas. This process involved a full evaluation of mathematics materials - from standard hard copy student and teacher edition textbooks to entirely digital materials - from 23 different publishers. The purpose of our evaluation was to narrow the number of programs that would move on to the next level of analysis by determining the extent to which the programs aligned with CCSS and pedagogical (instructional) standards. After we conducted a full evaluation of materials, we ranked the programs and recommended them for review by the Hawaii Curriculum Review Committee (HCRC).

We then led the HCRC, which was comprised of 48 K-12 mathematics teachers, coaches, principals, and other math experts, through the process of scoring and ranking the materials in order to identify the top two (K-12) programs for recommendation to the HIDOE for adoption.

The HCRC evaluation process focused on the extent to which materials aligned with:

Eight Standards for Mathematical Practice (Instructional Standards)

Common Core State Standards (Content Standards)

Digital Materials Requirement and Support (Textbook Overview)

Overall Usability and Impression of the Program (Overall Impression)

I observed several successful practices that align with the CCSS and the eight mathematical practices which can be applied by a district considering adoption of new materials. We followed the following four phases based on The Charles A. Dana Center materials for analysis and selection of curricular materials. As an educator, I believe following this process and applying the practices outlined within them to be most instrumental in determining the correct materials for your district and school.

As a member of the BERC team, I visited many schools this year for various studies and program evaluations. Of course no two schools are exactly the same, so I had the opportunity to witness an array of programs, plans, and goals dedicated to student success and to preparing students for their future. Due largely to my background in school counseling, the topic of college and career readiness is one that I am very familiar with and one I very much enjoyed taking a closer look at. One such program I have enjoyed studying is AVID (Advancement Via Individual Determination) a post-secondary college readiness system. This program uniquely focuses on under-served students while also being designed to increase school-wide learning. We have gathered information about the implementation of AVID at various schools through a variety of means, including focus groups with staff members, parents, and students, classroom observations, transcript analysis, high school graduation and college attendance rates, , and student and staff surveys. As you can probably guess, there were different implementation strategies and varying degrees of commitment and enthusiasm toward the program in each school we visited, but there were several practices that I observed that appeared to be widely successful and that could be applied to other programs as well. The following three practices are ones that I, as an educator, believe to be best practices for supporting students in their education journey from high school to college and beyond.